WELCOME TO MERSEA ISLAND - A GEM OFF THE ESSEX COAST. FAMOUSLY DESCRIBED IN 1880:- "A MORE DESOLATE REGION CAN SCARCE BE CONCEIVED, AND YET IT IS NOT WITHOUT BEAUTY".
STILL UNIQUE TODAY, CUT OFF AT HIGH TIDES, SURROUNDED BY MUD AND SALTMARSHES, MERSEA IS RICH IN COASTAL WILDLIFE.
HERE ARE SOME HIGHLIGHTS -

Wednesday, 20 July 2011

MOTH GROUP VISIT

Members of the Essex Moth Group made their annual visit to the country park on Tuesday 19th.Five traps were set up near the car park with two of them continuing till dawn by which time the final tally was about 50 macro moths. This figure is down by 25 species on last year's tally, no doubt due to the cool and clear night.

Members had already gone home and missed seeing this spectacular garden tiger moth which arrived at the trap between 1am and 4am. This species has been recorded at each meeting of the Moth Group here at the park over the last four years but has always waited till everybody has gone home!Numbers of garden tiger moths have drecreased in recent years in the many parts of the UK.

The nationally scarce saltmarsh loving ground lackey moth provided some interest. One or two are normally seen in the trap here each summer.

The big drinker moths are turning up at the traps at the moment and will continue to be regular visitors for the next 2 or 3 weeks. Bigger in size were three oak eggars that came to some of the traps.

This small emerald pictured above also turned up at last year's moth group session here and was the only record last summer.

The bulrush wainscot is reasonably widespread across the county near marshes and the coast and as the name suggests, has reedmace (bulrush) as the larval foodplant. It has been recorded here before but only in small numbers.

Earlier in the day 2 yellow wagtails flew over calling, a whimbrel was heard out on the mudflats and the regular nightingale was calling again from the car park up until dusk.The previous day there was a steady flow of swifts across the island all morning with at least 300 making their way westwards.

Andy Field visited Langenhoe Ranges with Richard Hull on the 20th and noted 6 greenshank, 40 green sandpipers, 250 black-tailed godwits, 100 bar-tailed godwits, 130 avocets, little ringed plover, peregrine and 2 sandwich terns. Recently there has been a good count of 100 little terns on the shingle point of Langenhoe.